Pastel Award 2025

Eleanor Cottrell

Otherwise We Are Lost

Jackson's Art Prize 2025
Oil Pastel
Paper
45 x 45 cm

“There is a long history of artists and the ballet. But what does this look like when the piece is not about the traditional or the perfect, but the human and primal need to move. I am deeply inspired by Pina Bausch’s ballet, and her centering of the woman’s experience in the Rite of Spring, a story of ritual where a woman is chosen to dance herself to death. She asks us ”How would you dance if you knew you were going to die?” This image uses stills from that ballet to think about ritual, collective expression and connection with the earth in brief, fleeting moment of dance. It is part two of an ongoing series.”